have eased their way into work because many are willing to accept the minimum wage of £5.73"

BASTARDS. When are they going to integrate into our culture and learn to scrounge benefit in order to buy 16 cans of stella down Tesco and then bitch about other ethnic groups doing exactly the same thing

because all the evidence says it is a good thing, every 1% increase in immigration leads to a 1.5% increase gdp, the CBI have argued that for ages, the only argument against it is that it puts strain on public services but again the evidence shows this is not the case, people tend to come over work hard and then return home putting very little burden on public services, many are leaving now because there are less prospects here now, many pundits reckon that this has provided a buffer for unemployment and the uk would be in alot worse a position now if it werent for the eastern european immigration

However, if I were an unskilled worker after the same jobs as the majority of economic immigrants to this country are, and as such, I found my employment opportunities significantly decreasing, I'd be kind of pissed off. That has nothing to do with their nationality, it's just a matter of equating cause with effect, and while there are without doubt other factors which will, and do currently, contribute towards a lack of job openings, for example worldwide recession, I'd argue that economic immigration is the most direct factor (in the sense that, by definition, it *means* people from other countries seeking employment and decreasing the number of jobs available to people already living in this country, whereas recession only means a reduced number of jobs by implication) as well as being the one with the most human face, and thus the one which is most easy to feel resentment for.

The fact that it may have racist or xenophobic associations is entirely contingent upon the structure of the world, i.e. an influx of Brits to this country, I'd argue, would be just as distressing for those seeking work, but it doesn't make sense seeing as there is no other Britain from which immigrants could arrive. Maybe there is an element of xenophobia to it, but there's no way that it's necessary. If I were standing at a buffet, just about to pile up my plate, when suddenly 100 people barged into the room and nicked all the food, I doubt I'd be happy, but as I've set it up, there isn't even a racial element to consider. Being pissed off only makes me self-interested, and only an idiot wouldn't be.

that there is x amount of jobs and so an increase in workers increases demand. Supply of cheap labour makes companies more profitable, they'll grow and invest money elsewhere leading to more oppurtunities (Im not sure exactly how it works but know the 'they come over here steal our jobs argument' is flawed), plus like I said now that prospects in britain arent as good many will leave

I don't know either way, I'm just presenting things as they appear to me. What I do know is that an increased number of jobs as a result of economic growth is not going to increase employment opportunities for people living here if the amount of economic immigration increases to match it.

1) Why jobs would be created which UK nationals (who could previously not find work because their potential jobs were being taken by EU migrants) *could* do but the aforementioned EU migrants could *not*. Are you assuming that these UK nationals have developed additional skills suitable for employment during this period of economic growth?

2) If you're not assuming that, then why would there no longer be foreign workers available for employment who are preferable to employers, as there were previously? I doubt that the success rate for people who have emigrated from elsewhere in the EU to find work in this country is anywhere near 100%, and even if it were, as news of economic growth in this country travelled across the continent, more people would travel in the opposite direction looking to gain from it.

is that you think a tap was opened in the late 90s, and we are facing a Daunting Problem of the sort that we've never encountered before. Emigration has been a fact of British life since the 60s, and although there've been long term changes, immigration has had exceedingly little impact on the economy as a whole.

What immigration does, on what Daily Star readers observe, is an upward pressure upon the system. More immyghants come in, they take lower paid work which the white working class used to take. At the same time, thanks to better augmence of education, wider horizons and the basic human desire to better oneself, those same white working class look to push their children or themselves to the next level of the class system. The effect ho_fo describes creates more jobs higher up the system for these people.

That's the theory, and broadly it works. There was more immigration in the noughties, but that was more than made up for by the ballooning economy. As the Daily Star article in fact remarks, we can expect immigration to tail off drastically now we've hit a recession.

Problems emerge when education fails to make up for a wider feeling of despair and fatalism setting in from a vacuous society propelled entirely by consumerism, and a subsequent search for easy scapegoats.

"Thanks to better augmence of education, wider horizons and the basic human desire to better oneself, those same white working class look to push their children or themselves to the next level of the class system. The effect ho_fo describes creates more jobs higher up the system for these people."

We're talking specifically about people who *do* compete at the bottom end of the employment spectrum though, and whether they have a right to feel aggrieved or not.

but I'm a historian, and frankly, I don't really give a shit that a few people in the here and now are aggrieved. If something is changing then someone, somewhere, is going to be aggrieved. Fine. But given the history of labour in this country and elsewhere, British unskilled workers are very well treated: social security, free education and health care and a reasonably large wealth of options available to them vis a vis either getting work or training to get better work. And I believe despite problems with the system at a higher level and specifically its regulation and provision of safety nets, the overall grind of capitalism leads to better things for this country's people. And immigration aids this, as described.

We could completely stop immigration. Let British workers have British jobs, forever and ever. That's what Albania did. An extreme example, but countries that impose heavy restrictions on immigration tend to develop fragile economies, one of the reasons why ours is stronger than Frances'. And, if you look at France, you STILL inherit the racial tensions.

So I suppose I'm saying that yes, people competing at the shallow end do have a right to feel aggrieved. Of course they do. But if you're at the bottom end of the employment spectrum you are always fucking going to feel the pinch, one way or another. Policy makers are given the task to make as much provision for these people as they possibly can, whilst highlighting a way towards either you or your children NOT being at the bottom end of the employment spectrum.

All I said was that not all opposition to it is born out of racism or xenophobia, and I stand by that. A lot of people will totally justifiably have a problem with it, and to immediately dismiss that as racism, which *loads* of people do, is reactionary and unfair.

means you have been undercut by a British builder on one specific occasion; you can go and look for another job and not be undercut. Being undercut by a Polish builder can be seen as being indicative of a pervading trend for migrant workers to undercut UK nationals.

"UK nationals are cathing these jobs at the same time as the migrants - more so as there are just more of them."

That assumes proportionality, and there's no reason for there to be any, and even if there were, there's no reason to believe that, once a UK national reaches the end of his one year contract and a surplus of migrant workers has again developed, he won't be replaced by the cheaper alternative who will work longer hours.

"UK Nationals do have some things going for them. Fluent in the language and unlikely to suffer from racism."

Sure. I'm not sure how much those things are taken into account by employers though.

people aren't laid off and then replaced my migrant workers? Because anecdotal suggests otherwise. Which can of course be easily dismissed as being racist. But I'm sure there's economic theory that backs it up anyway - the continuous process of economic migration rather than it occurring in discrete stages; the fact that even if there are no jobs available here at any given moment, the fact that opportunities back home are either just as bad or negligibly better will prevent reverse movement; the fact that in the real world, people don't respond - indeed *nothing* responds - to economic factors instantaneously; etc. But thanks for the patronisation all the same.

Re: employers not taking into account fluency of English - the service industry (and specifically the restaurant industry) has a vast, vast number of foreign workers. You must know this. You can't live in a major city without knowing. Limited English has a detrimental effect on their job. There can therefore be only two reasons they *get* the jobs, or at least remain in them, in the first place: either they offer other qualities which employers see to be more beneficial than fluency in English, or British nationals just don't want the jobs (or feel that they wouldn't get them if they did). If it's the former, then that's my point; if it's the latter, the "Taking our jobs" claim has no basis in this instance, and either isn't relevant or wouldn't be made at all. Obviously that's just the service industry, and a specific area of it at that, but surely that's going to have a greater reliance upon communication skills than most?

you think that the response of people to macroeconomic factors - for example, the development of a worker surplus, seeing as that's what's being discussed here - is immediate and necessarily correct? You think that, if there are no jobs available, people will instantaneously become aware of this and leave the country?

reports show time and again that unskilled British workers are simply unwilling to do the jobs that immigrants end up doing, such as farm labour, because they'd be required to work hard for shoddy pay, amongst non-English speakers. It's just a cruel fact of the globalised labour market that whilst overall benefits to the economy are large, people at the thin end of the wedge are either going to have to adjust their standards, or be left out.

The western governments and multinational corporations are all in favour of deregulated markets and free trade, and yet – even though their policies deliberately create disparity within the population – they seek to deny their workers the right to use their own labour as an exploitable asset.

At the moment, the west is in a position where it is cherry-picking the concept of a free-market economy in a way that is ideologically and morally flawed.

We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancées whom they have never seen